There is an opportunity to deploy pressure sensing materials in certain areas of manufacture or sports, where the handling, orientation and motion of an object may be important to overall system or user performance. Two areas of interest are the progress of goods during manufacturing and shipment, and the manner and strength by which sports equipment may be held and the resulting effect on performance.
Due to a market need to improve the quality and quantity of goods produced and shipped to market, various systems and methods exist to measure, store, transmit and display data related to goods during production or in shipment.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,125,686 issued Oct. 3, 2000 to Han and McNally for an “Impact Measuring Device for Delicate and Fragile Articles” discloses a real time data collection and transmission method which uses accelerometers embedded in devices to measure impacts.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,174,277, “Product Integrity Systems and Associated Methods” issued to Vock, et al., on Feb. 6, 2007, provides a movement monitor device for adhesion to industrial articles during shipment, which measures impact as well as other environmental parameters.
However, known devices do not currently use pressure sensing material to track and monitor the progress of goods during manufacturing or shipping. Diagnostic tools do not currently determine in a reliable way either the nature and general direction of force applied to an article or whether, where and how hard an article is contacted, during a manufacturing line or in shipping or handling.
There is a need for this information to help optimize the processes, and provide appropriate protection to articles.
Learning how to or teaching some to properly operate a piece of sports equipment is critical to performance and enjoyment of the game. In golf, learning how to or teaching some to properly swing a golf club is acknowledged as a difficult task, and enjoyment of golf by novice golfers is often impeded by inconsistent or incorrect club positioning or how the golf club is gripped. Professional golfers may be interested in more quantitative analysis of their hand position and dynamic grip pressure on a club throughout their swing for training purposes. There is also a desire to provide a quantitative basis on which fit of golf club grips for a user's natural grip may be determined. Those same principles would apply in other sports like cricket, tennis, badminton, hockey, baseball and other sports involving a club, stick, bat or racket.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,033,370 “Capacitative Sensor” issued to Reinbold et al. on Mar. 7, 2000, U.S. Pat. No. 6,716,034 “Grip Pressure Detector Assembly”, issued to Casanova, Jr. et al., on Apr. 6, 2004, and U.S. Pat. No. 8,033,916 “Grip Pressure Sensor”, issued to Caldwell and Chen on Oct. 11, 2011, each discloses the general use of force sensitive gauges in sports equipment, including golf club grips to provide grip assistance. However, the inventions disclosed therein either: use non-robust threshold based sensing materials incapable of accurate pressure sensation and incapable of distinguishing where, when and how hard the user is applying pressure along the club grip or even differential measurements of pressure at multiple locations; or (in the case of U.S. Pat. No. 6,716,034) require modifications to the handle to accommodate steel strain gauges.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,219,0338 issued to Kolen on May 15, 2007, discloses electronic orientation sensors within or upon golf clubs and other objects, without any corresponding grip pressure measurements or analysis.
Existing tools are able to help a golfer tell whether a club is being held too tightly in a global sense, but not where it is being held too tightly, or where it might also be being held too loosely or simply inappropriately. A similar tool would be of interest in baseball, cricket, hockey, racquet sports, video game controllers and other devices where the manner in which the object is held affects performance of the user.
There is a need for a robust pressure sensing golf grip which obtains a plurality of pressure measurements in relation to a golf swing for improved swing coaching.
There is a need for a golf grip which uses flexible, state-of the art multi-touch technology in a novel way.
There is a need for a robust analytical tool for obtaining and interpreting data obtained from such a pressure sensing golf grip analysis by a computer implemented diagnostic tool.
There is a need for an improved golf club which provides this analysis within the club itself, and also a means for sending the data for processing and interpretation for the user.
There is a need for an analytical tool for indicating appropriate grip pressure, before and during a swing to assist golfers, and for assisting golf coaches in instructing golfers.
There is a need for a service which combines swing grip pressure data with other relevant data, including golf ball trajectory, golf ball location, hand speed, club speed, and other data to assist with near-real time swing analysis, learning and coaching.
There is a need for a meaningful way of providing the feedback information to the golfer, so that the club is gripped with the appropriate amount of pressure at the appropriate locations, throughout the swing.
In general, technical problems to be overcome include: chip design which permits the sensor wiring to connect to a large pressure sensor array and fit within the article being monitored; protecting the sensors without unduly compromising their performance; and providing useful user interface tools to interpret performance issues and/or trigger reliable alerts.